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Aargh!!!!!!
I had a post more than half written and it vanished into thin air. How is that possible???
Anyway. I was talking about something that happens to me very frequently. Especially since I lack perseverance (despite my school’s motto, perseverentia omnia vincit). I start a project and get about halfway, then run into a problem or a hurdle. Then I find I don’t like what I’m doing, or what I need to do next. So screech. I stop. Half-made, half-baked, half-done. No more progress. Then the thing hangs over me like a gloomy portentous cloud that never rains but always threatens.
Currently I have a few dark clouds, and I’m showing you one today. A friend asked me to make a caddy to carry two 1-litre bottles of water for her husband (=dark, sober fabric). It sounds simple, and I went looking for a pattern. I decided on one with a double-ended zipper. I had to upsize it to fit my requirements, got my friend to approve the fabric, and ended up with this:
Looks OK, right? Only, when I ironed some of the pieces, I managed to transfer some gunk from my iron to the fabric, which unfortunately shows every blemish clearly. I tried everything I could to try and get it off, but couldn’t. Then I tried cutting different pieces and sewed them together, but I still didn’t like the result. Project = Fail.
So then I went looking for a different pattern, since I couldn’t face this one any more. I chose one that looked simpler (Bento Lunch Bag) and after a few hiccups (including having to use a close ended zipper rather than an open ended one) and made this:
That doesn’t look too bad, so I sent it off to my friend, by now long overdue. The clouds were already formed. Its a bit floppy (in more than one sense). 😦
Now I’m on the third iteration. Using denim this time, and my own concept. My friend wants a divider between the bottles, and plastic lining inside (as the second one had). This time I took very precise numbers so I don’t end up overestimating as I usually seem to do. I can show you this, not very clear result for the inner lining. That’s a Netflix series on “Deadly Women” (sic) in the background.
It involved sewing the centre divider by hand to the sides. I’m about halfway through finishing, but wasn’t liking the result, so I gave up last night and went to bed. I had an idea what I could do to improve things, so I might do that next.
The dark clouds aren’t dispersed yet.
I know I said I’d be a good blogger, but good intentions never got me anywhere.
I’m still in the sewing madly phase, especially since someone wanted a bus load of neck pillows. While the pillow itself is very quick to sew, I had to stop for my stock of fibrefill to be replenished. And I’m never convinced that the stuffing I did was done correctly or sufficiently. How much is too much? It doesn’t help that the original pattern talks in terms of weight of an entirely unknown (to me) brand and type of the filling. Which makes ordering reinforcements somewhat of a gamble. Will I have enough? Will I be smothered by a mountain of white fluff?
My friend is fond of the blues. And what you’re seeing is actually a sort of miracle, because I never thought I’d ever be able to bring myself to cut into the fabric I bought in March. (My precioussssss…) The yellow in the first picture was a fat quarter from The Square Inch, while the rest of the batiks were a thrilling find in Chennai’s Cotton Street in Egmore. “Give me one of each!”
Now that lot of fabric was from different sources. I rather like the checks myself. I feel the need to go forth and buy a metre in every colour. I’ve been surprising myself with how successfully I’ve combined colours and patterns. You’d think I had good taste and colour and design sense 😉
While the original pillow takes less than one bottle of the stuffing, my friend wanted modifications done, with a centre higher than the ends, and an overall increase in size. I’ve now consumed twice my body volume in fibrefill.
I wrote a guest post for a friend, Tanushree at Karaashilp. Do go and check it out, as well as the other guests posts she’s having in her Guest Post Marathon.
…is how much I wove during my training at the Weavers’ Service Centre.
And this is how it looks.
I haven’t decided yet what I will do with it.
My greatest learning was the tie-up and actual weaving on a floor loom. In the middle, I thought for sure I’d been cured of any desire to get a floor loom of my own. Now, however, I’m not sure. The one I want will not have a fly shuttle mechanism, but then that would be noisy, not good in a flat. Also, it is a jack loom, so fewer connections to make for tying up. Which is also good.
I am also taking away some connections for future yarn and accessory supplies. In addition, I got a warping frame made, and ordered a bobbin winder and some fly shuttles to be modified into plain end feed shuttles.
Most of which might be gobbledygook to my regular readers… But you will not need any words for the following photo.
Weaving training during the day. Work in the evenings and late night. Meeting and setting up meetings with old friends. Watching Mighty Raju: Rio Calling directed by one of those old friends. Concert by Malladi Brothers.
Calluses on feet from treadling floor loom. Catching up on reading.
I finally got to weave at the centre, but I spent the best part of several days just sitting and watching while the oldest employee fiddled with the cords on the treadles and lamms that were being set into the frame of what had been a jacquard loom. I am very bad at sitting doing absolutely nothing watching a very slow and repetitive task being carried out by someone else.
I am almost convinced now that if I acquire a floor loom, it must be something that caters to the gadget queen in me… As a hobby weaver, I’m not sure I want to spend days in just setting up to weave. So that means that expensive to buy and expensive to ship foreign loom. Then also, sometimes it is like a brief glimmer of light in dense fog, and I wonder if I need another loom at all. After all, I don’t live in a land of hobby weavers who’d gladly take a white elephant off my hands if I find out it’s not for me. There isn’t a market for highly polished highly priced looms…
But then I come back home and read the forums and the fog closes in again.
Unfortunately the warp I’ve been given to work samples on is painted for ikat. Not good for showing textural patterns.
The other thing I noticed is that the figures in a government office are like toys that only move when you’re watching. You leave at the end of the day and come back the next morning, and things are exactly where you left them, and the people are picking up where you last saw them. I think there’s a term for such reality, but it doesn’t feel like real time.
This evening I met some of my oldest friends, at very short notice. The weather during the day here is hot, but in the evenings it turns cool and cloudy. We even had pre-monsoon showers a couple of days ago.
I met my girl classmates at the weekend over a lunch so protracted it almost turned into tea. Only about half of those in our Whatsapp group actually turned up. Something similar tonight, when I met boys from kindergarten. I studied in the same school from nursery to 12th, and unbelievably, still have good friends from then. But I always feel we make friends much more easily the younger we are.
I still haven’t woven, but I’m getting up a list of things I want to try, and things I want to have made for me. Weaving accessories. No half measures when you’re having a midlife spree of madness, right?
And I’m making those connections, for future use. For yarn or for yarning.
Whenever I come home to Hyderabad I try and meet as many of my friends as are here. Having several ways of contacting people nowadays can make this easier, or harder. Not everyone is on all social networks, and it can get confusing to remember what information you’ve passed on where.
However, we did manage to meet today, 7 of us from school, with some of our children over a very protracted lunch. Much laughter and many memories.
And a cake to celebrate 25 years of… Something 🙂
Actually I haven’t done any weaving yet at the centre. Today I studied a book in Telugu that teaches theory. It’s a very different feeling to be doing a craft that actually has terminology in my mother tongue. I copied down a glossary. Proof that weaving goes back a longer time than knitting or crochet in this part of the country, at least.
I got to see pictures of the latest loom that the carpenter built for someone. He was also able to give me an estimate for the size of loom I want. He will build it with teak.
I did throw a shuttle, but an empty one, just to see how far my arms would reach. I don’t think I can cope with a throw shuttle for any wider than about 35″, but the loom that will be built will have a fly shuttle mechanism. The only problem then is that that will add a few more feet to the footprint of the loom.
This will anyway be longer than the David, because that’s how these looms are, and it will be countermarche. The plan is for me to learn all about tie-ups, since those are the weighty part of the theory. Back to school on Monday.
swakrta.com 